PLEASE NOTE: Due to poor organization of translations on this website, I must note that this is a review of Andy Orchard's translation of the "Poetic Edda", which he has titled "The Elder Edda: A Book of Viking Lore".īeing familiar with Andy Orchard's handbook on Norse mythology ("Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend", 1997) and finding it to be a nice middle ground between Rudolf Simek's deeply flawed handbook and the limited scope of John Lindow's own, it was with high hopes that I waited for Andy Orchard's 2011 English translation of the Poetic Edda, or, alternately, as Orchard has chosen to go with here, the "Elder Edda". This translation also features the quest-poem The Lay of Svipdag and The Waking of Angantyr, in which a girl faces down her dead father to retrieve his sword.Ĭomic, tragic, instructive, grandiose, witty, and profound, the poems of the Edda have influenced artists from Wagner to Tolkien and speak to us as freely as when they were first written down seven hundred and fifty years ago. Their enemies walk beside the heroic Helgi, Sigurd the Dragon-Slayer, Brynhild the shield-maiden, and the implacable Gudrun.
The one-eyed Odin, red-bearded Thor, Loki the trickster, the lovely goddesses, and the giants who are In this great collection of Norse-Icelandic mythological and heroic poetry, the exploits of gods and humans are related. The Poetic Edda begins with The Seeress's Prophecy which recounts the creation of the world, and looks forward to its destruction and rebirth. It is a fascinating collection of poems that has stirred the imagination of artists such as Richard Wagner and Thomas Gray, and it will continue to inspire as it stands as a valuable and informative historical document and an entertaining set of stories of Norse mythology.The waterfalls plunge, an eagle soars above them,Īfter the terrible conflagration of Ragnarok, the earth rises serenely again from the ocean, and life is renewed.
Rediscovered in the seventeenth century and immediately celebrated for its broad portrait of northern pagan beliefs, "The Poetic Edda" is the most important source of Norse mythology and Germanic heroic legends in existence today. This body of poetry contains narratives on creation, the Doom of the Gods, the adventures of Thor and hostile giants, and many tales of love, family, heroes, and tragedy. It was preserved for hundreds of years in the medieval Codex Regius of Iceland.
First passed down orally through innumerable generations of minstrels before the presence of Christianity in Scandinavia, and written down eventually by unknown poets, "The Poetic Edda" is a collection of mythological and heroic Old Norse poems.
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